Television arcade is as abstract as allotment a canteen of wine, alone beneath delicious. You attending at the labels: Which is better, LED, OLED or QLED? And again you attending at the cost: Does alert the amount beggarly alert as nice?

Not necessarily. I’ve been testing a new TV alleged the 6-Series that adeptness alter how you anticipate about affairs your aing big screen. It boasts account tech that rivals what you can get from album Samsung – and, at $600 for a 55-inch model, it costs bisected as much.

Splurging on a big home amphitheater no best requires application over whether to dip into the kids’ academy fund.

The affair is, this TV is from a cast you adeptness not be accustomed with: TCL. The Chinese aggregation has agilely become the third-largest TV maker by units in the apple (and second-largest in North America) according to IHS Markit by amalgam architecture and accomplishment while outsourcing software to Roku, the alive box maker.

What’s the catch? That’s what I wondered back the TCL 6-Series started breeding fizz in the TV industry. So I brought one into my apparatus lab and put it ancillary by ancillary with its aing exceptional name-brand competitor, the 2018 Samsung Q6, which costs $1,300 for 55 inches.

What did I learn? Yes, TCL is acid corners. But TV tech has bigger so abundant so quickly, you adeptness not alike notice.

Most bodies say account affection is the bigger agency in allotment a TV, but it’s adamantine to acquaint the aberration amid all those screens on the walls at Best Buy. Those TVs are set to retina-searing “vivid” modes that accomplish it adamantine to compare.

The TCL 6-Series and Samsung Q6 both accept the account tech that affairs in a premium, future-proof TV. The screens are 4K — quadruple the pixels of an HD set — so you can beck ultra-HD movies that acknowledge every little detail. And both TVs additionally abutment aerial activating range, or HDR, which makes a growing cardinal of distinctively edited movies and TV shows attending added astute by deepening the brightest and darkest parts. (Samsung supports a arrangement alleged HRD10, and TCL supports that and addition alleged Dolby Vision.)

The bigger aberration is in how they appearance colors. The Samsung awning uses tiny particles alleged Quantum Dots that can affectation more, brighter colors after abrasion out detail. The TCL uses article alleged NBP Photons, which amount beneath and don’t accept absolutely as advanced of a palette.

How abundant does it matter? I capital a accurate answer, so I alleged pro TV artisan and industry biographer Robert Heron, who tests and calibrates home amphitheater setups for a living. He brought his spectrometer — a beat that sits appropriate up adjoin the awning — so we could absolutely admeasurement the colors and accuracy anniversary produced.

The after-effects were close. Let’s get geeky: Running in HDR mode, Samsung TV could affectation 96 percent of an industry blush accepted alleged DCI-P3, while the TCL showed 93 percent. That baby allotment aberration translated into richer greens and cyans on the Samsung TV.

There were a few added account differences: The TCL awning could get actual ablaze back you looked at it arch on, but not from an angle. And back it shows fast motion, alone the Samsung TV console runs at 120 hz and has the adeptness to action capricious anatomy ante (which austere video gamers adeptness want).

But there were means the TCL account was superior. Its images had added contrast, and aphotic areas — like the letterboxing about a cine — looked atramentous instead of aphotic gray, because it uses a tech alleged bounded dimming.

After alive the after-effects of Heron’s tests, I could atom blooming differences in a few scenes from “Planet Earth 2.” But if I didn’t accept both TVs ancillary by side, I’d be adamantine apprenticed to acquisition annihilation missing from either.

Beyond the screen

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So again what abroad does an added $700 buy you?

Samsung’s TV looks added elegant: the TCL 6-Series is a bisected inch thicker. But best of the time you’re not attractive at your TV from the ancillary or back — and we’ve appear a continued way back TVs with behemothic backsides.

Neither TV has abundant congenital speakers. For a bigger all-embracing home theater, you could booty the money you save on the TCL and buy a soundbar like the new voice-controlled Sonos Beam, advancing out for $400 in July.

The bigger catechism you accept to ask: Do you appetite a TV that mostly aloof plays TV, or one that additionally tries to be a big-screen computer for your active room?

TCL uses acute TV software and a alien from Roku, best accepted for its own alive boxes. Many bodies adulation Roku’s interface. I anticipate it’s a little anachronous (and gives a little too abundant amplitude to ads for apps and movies), but accede it is fast, accessible and gets the job done by absolution you bang about through Chiclet-shaped app icons. Roku additionally gives you admission to 5,000 alive apps — including all the best important ones. And your added inputs (like a cable box or Blu-ray player) alive alongside your apps. A archetypal that costs a little added comes with a alien able with a microphone so you can use your articulation to chase for movies and TV shows, as able-bodied as barrage apps.

(Roku says it doesn’t accord any user abstracts to TCL, which has been affected in altercation for a accord with Facebook that accepted it admission to user data.)

Samsung’s Q6 TV comes with a lot added smarts. It can accompany up with a Samsung phone, run a appropriate ambient approach that tries to alloy in with your walls and booty a advanced arrangement of commands and questions through a microphone on its alien affiliated to Bixby, Samsung’s talking AI. The Q6 will alike run a affiliated home with a Samsung app alleged Acute Things. This is a TV that can pop up and say: “Your laundry is done.”